Quotes by Milton Babbitt (born May 10, 1916)

Milton Babbitt Quotes

- I dare suggest that the composer would do himself and his music an immediate and eventual service by total, resolute and voluntary withdrawal from this public world to one of private performance and electronic media.

- The new limitations are the human ones of perception.

- I can't believe that people really prefer to go to the concert hall under intellectually trying, socially trying, physically trying conditions, unable to repeat something they have missed, when they can sit at home under the most comfortable and stimulating circumstances and hear it as they want to hear it.

- As for the future of electronic music, it seems quite obvious to me that its unique resources guarantee its use, because it has shifted the boundaries of music away from the limitations of the acoustical instrument, of the performer's coordinating capabilities, to the almost infinite limitations of the electronic instrument.

- Anyone who hears well can be educated to appreciate my music. The more you listen to serial music, the better able you are to recognize its grammar, its configurations, its modes of procedures.

- These limitless electronic media have shown us new boundaries and new limits that are not yet understood -- the very mysterious limits, for example of the human capacity to hear, to conceptualize, and to perceive.

- I am concerned with stating an attitude towards the indisputable facts of the status and condition of the composer of what we will, for the moment, designate as 'serious,' 'advanced,' contemporary music. This composer expends an enormous amount of time and energy -- and, usually, considerable money -- on the creation of a commodity which has little, no, or negative commodity value. He is, in essence, a 'vanity' composer. The general public is largely unaware of and uninterested in his music. The majority of performers shun it and resent it. Consequently, the music is little performed, and then primarily at poorly attended concerts before an audience consisting in the main of fellow professionals. At best, the music would appear to be for, of, and by specialists.

- I want a piece of music to be literally as much as possible.

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